


Snowbound

by yuutsuhime



Series: Snowbound [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Character Study, Experimental Style, Explicit Consent, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-Con (Past), Kissing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-World War I, Robot Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Screenplay/Script Format, Slice of Life, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-28 12:14:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20063848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuutsuhime/pseuds/yuutsuhime
Summary: A traumatized playwright finds the strength to write, introduce herself to her classmates, and admit her feelings for the record-keeping service automaton who rescued her from a wartime siege.





	Snowbound

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning that this was written as a reflection on asexuality, trauma, and my experience feeling like a robot in sexual and intimate situations.

  1. Hello, my name is Ately Dressler. I've decided to become a playwright. When I move characters around a stage, it reminds me of how my adulthood is a dollhouse and the walls around me are sweating with heat; I'm afraid that you'll see the damp under my arms and realize that I'm just a person, too. Don't look at me too close. I'm afraid.

  2. Hello, my name is Ately Dressler. My father's head is in a bucket and my mother is a bar of soap. My life has become fantastical since losing them; and by losing, I mean both that I forgot where they are, and I forgot if they're gone. I'm just here, awkwardly introducing myself to a class of people I've never met. I feel so exposed. Can I sit down now?

  3. I'm not actually sure who I am. I'm sorry to disappoint you.

I can't think of any more introductions to discard so instead I just stand, pressing my clothes against my skeleton to simulate having flesh. I'm not made of metal, like Ava, but I'm as close to skeletal as you can be. "My name is Ately Dressler," I want to say. Instead, I can't breathe.

* * *

In the middle of class I'm thinking about how hell is performed in front of an audience. When I was fifteen, I saw hell on-stage and it was all cardboard flames and pointy tails. Men smiling a bit too widely, brandishing their pitchforks. A quaint and tawdry display that you could leave from to use a drinking fountain; or, to not come back, ever. When I think about men I think about megaphones and a capitalized Hell, which is a place language goes to die. When I think about men talking I think about men telling dangerous, unartistic stories about me. I think about electronic voices; film; the three men who were in charge of my version of Hell who sat around playing poker and drinking stolen vodka after I was offstage.

In the middle of class I've realized that Professor Wendt is boring. It's not his fault that I'm a dripping ball of thoughts; or, that I despise talking to him; or indeed that I despise talking to my peers. My writing is a quagmire, I've been told. It has "exotic" qualities. Frighteningly conceited and at times immensely violent, without real reason to be. I don't defend myself.

* * *

Fifteen minutes before nine o'clock, Ava returns to our shared dormitory. We suppose it should be called an 'apartment', since the property is unaffiliated with any school or place of business; however, given the size (half of the seven-foot width for each of us) and scale (the oven uncomfortably close to the foot of my bed, and the one window between us) we've determined it's rather like a girl's toy house than two adult women's place of residence. Perhaps some of the oddity comes from thinking of myself as an adult woman – I'm used to fitting my body into small spaces, after all.

"Did you appreciate the artistry of today's publications," I ask Ava.

"I did not read them," Ava says. "It is not the business of an automaton."

The Braun Printing Company, Ava's workplace, consistently ranks her as the fastest typesetter – unsurprising given her innate, designed precision.

"You have not cleaned the stove," Ava mentions.

"So I haven't."

It's odd watching how we've settled into domesticity since the war. More odd how we've settled into old lies that no longer matter. On forged paper, Ava is my property – "inheritance from my late father" – but in truth, there's no such contract and she's certainly my closest friend. With her, the unspeakable need not be explained again. It's a fundamental trust that's settled, now to be covered over by silly domestic disputes and dirty dishes.

"I understand that your duty is scriptwriting," she comments. "Yet you cannot write anything, and you leave filth everywhere. I don't understand that."

"I'll clean it."

"Thank you, Ately," Ava says. Her voice lacks any inflection – she isn't capable of it – but I can tell she's not upset. She was just telling the truth. Perhaps at my most judgmental I'd also tell the truth and call her a machine in a wretched, final act of cruelty. The truth is – that we often can't talk about the truth. It just sits there like broken glass, and we cut the soles of our feet if we don't tiptoe lightly enough.

* * *

In the middle of class I remember that I'm wearing a pleated skirt, with a ribbon in my hair, and it feels like I'm fifteen and all the art inside me hasn't been disembowelled onto the concrete. I've titled my play "The Girl who Does Not Exist".

I think the "girl who does not exist" used to exist. I think she, like me, used to cry on her mother's knee too much. She would headbutt sunflowers for fun and beg her father for coffee even though she was only just starting to help him at his company, and had too much energy already.
    
    
    GIRL (15, filled with brilliant energy) sits with DAD (45, with kind, sun-tanned wrinkles in the corners of his eyes) on the stoop of an apartment complex.
    
        GIRL
        I'm afraid about the future.
    
    DAD expresses a genuine laugh at his daughter's naivete.
    
        DAD
        Are you now? What of it?
    
        GIRL
        Because I know that you'll die.
    
        DAD
        I won't. Not for a long time.
    
        GIRL
        But what will happen then?
    
        DAD
        We don't know. I think the truth is that we can't know, and we have to accept that we can't know.
    
        GIRL
        You're talking about this like I'm a kid who's never heard about death before. This isn't a question about philosophy or God...
    
    GIRL looks up at DAD, and then looks back down.
    
        GIRL (cont.)
        I don't know what I'll do when you die.
    
        I don't know what to do when things end the wrong way.
    

* * *

  1. Hello, my name is Ately Dressler. In the winter of 1918, my best friend and I ran across seven miles of frozen farmland before we found a railroad, and when we finally jumped onto a passing freight train I had frostbite in both of my feet. We were in a car full of hay and farm equipment. I think I kissed her.

* * *

Fifteen minutes before nine o'clock, Ava opens our door. "The manager has decided that I'm unfit to typeset or transcribe political documents," she says. "I supposed you should know."

"Is it because –"

"Yes. It is because I neglected to reset my memory before I transitioned to a civilian role in society."

"But –"

"It's made me a deficient worker," Ava says. "I cannot be trusted to use my station truthfully. I'm told I could abuse my station to spread propaganda."

"Would you?"

"The company president has years of experience diagnosing malfunction in automata. He does not trust me. Perhaps you shouldn't either."

"I trust you," I say.

Ava is quiet.

"Perhaps you shouldn't," Ava repeats. I respond by moving to sit down on the floor next to her.

"I'm afraid," Ava finally says. "I'm afraid that I'm a monster."

"I don't know what to say."

"Perhaps I truly am just a dysfunctional machine. After all, I'm the same tool used by a murderous bureaucrat to catalog the siege and torment of civilians; yourself among them."

"I'm aware," I interject.

"Please don't be misled by gratitude, Ately. A machine performs a function. Mine was that of the German military."

"Don't talk about yourself that way."

"I'm sorry," Ava says, and then falls silent. "In the view of the law, I'm little more than your toy doll. And in the view of my employer, I'm simply a tool that should be wiped as he sees fit. I'm finding it hard to see 'myself' as anything but. I don't understand what to be, or if I'm meant to be at all."

* * *
    
    
    GIRL (15, paranoid) sits with her MOM (39, made of sunflowers) and her DAD at the dining room table of her parents' apartment. She has grown up here, but it is no longer a place of safety.
    
    DAD thumbs through a book of ration cards.
    
        MOM
        It's less every month.
    
        DAD
        They're starving us out. There's no need for rations when most of them are those machines, anyway.
    
        GIRL
        Is the front closer?
    
        DAD
        Yeah, we –
    
        MOM
        Oh, don't tell her –
    
        GIRL
        Why shouldn't I know? I'm –
    
        DAD
        She's in this house with us, and –
    
        MOM
        She's too young.
    
        GIRL
        Why am I too young? They're plucking my friends off the streets, and –
    
        MOM
        It won't happen to you.
    
        GIRL
        Why not? How do you know? All I hear about is how the fighting will be here by next week, and then what? Will I still be too young to understand?
    

* * *

  1. Hello, my name is Ately Dressler. My father was Karl Dressler, and my mother's maiden name was Marie Goessling. Sometime in early 1900 they both overheard a foreigner with a daughter named Otelie and then spelled her name wrong on my birth record. My father always wanted to travel north to Scandinavia but our visas were denied and they couldn't afford to both work and study language anyway. I remember how he sat in his fireplace armchair with his pipe, reading about snow. How he'd call my mother and I over whenever a book had a microscope photograph of an ice crystal.

* * *

In the middle of class I wonder if I still count as a virgin. Maybe it doesn't matter if you stop believing in God.
    
    
    GIRL (16, unable to speak) no longer knows where her parents are. Three MEN play poker at a round table at stage right. GIRL enters from stage left and quietly walks to center stage, where she hesitates. She looks at the audience, then at the MAN at the head of the table. GIRL continues walking to the MAN and eventually sits down on his lap, while the MAN strokes her chin.
    
    GIRL looks at the audience as if to perform an aside, but says nothing.
    

* * *

Fifteen minutes before nine o'clock, Ava brings a briefcase home. "I've been instructed to take a diagnostic examination," she says. "What's wrong?"

I shrug.

"Ately."

I shrug again. All I can think about are the words spiralling around in my head, and how my hand is a funnel that pours them out onto paper, and how there are too many words to pour cleanly, and how utterly terrified I am of spilling any. My mother would tell me to make a mug of tea and relax in my father's armchair but I can't breathe and putting any liquid into myself will drown all the delicate flying things that are in the way.

"Ately," Ava repeats. When I don't respond again, Ava opens her briefcase and removes the documents from within.

"I am going to take this test, to eliminate any suspicion regarding my background and memory," Ava says.

I nod. Ava feeds ink into her pen and falls silent, to the point where I can hear the motors and gears in her chest quietly vibrating as she writes.

"Are you watching me?" Ava asks.

I nod, and Ava gestures a smile in front of her face. One of our inventions to convey tone. I'm not sure if it means it's still safe to share secrets with each other.

You may read my answers if you want," Ava says. "It's only the truth."

I move to sit cross-legged on the foot of Ava's bed, overlooking her desk.
    
    
    MEMORY ASSESSMENT FOR VALKYRIE-CLASS AUTOMATA AVA DELTA-509
    ON BEHALF OF MR. J. EDWARD BRAUN & ASSOCIATES
    
    
    
    1. STATE YOUR LEGAL NAME AND DATE OF BIRTH.
       _Ava Delta-509; May 15, 1915_
    
    2. DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON BEHALF OF THE GERMAN MILITARY?
       _No_
    
    3. DID YOU FORMERLY WORK ON BEHALF OF THE GERMAN MILITARY? (IF YES, STATE DATES OF EMPLOYMENT, JOB TITLE, AND IMMEDIATE SUPERVISOR; AND, STATE CIRCUMSTANCES OF YOUR DEPARTURE).
       _Yes; May 15, 1915 – January 27, 1918, secretary under Lt. E. Francis Schmidt.
       Deserted._
    
    4. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE SOUND OF MIND? PROVIDE A WRITTEN EXPLANATION.
       _No._
    
    5. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE A MACHINE? PROVIDE A WRITTEN EXPLANATION.
       _Yes._
    
    6. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE A PERSON? PROVIDE A WRITTEN EXPLANATION.
       _Yes._
    

"I suppose this should take all night," Ava says. The cold is already seeping through the cracks around our window, and I shiver slightly. I imagine the dusting of snow falling into me, and how Ava had joined me yesterday, as we walked together from the University after my last class of the week had finished. _I suppose I'll try,_ Ava had said, and caught a snowflake in her mouth where it landed, unmelting, against metal.

* * *

  1. Hello, my name is Ately Dressler. I'm not sure which parts of me were always there, and which ones grew to replace old ones that broke. I never want to touch or be touched by another person, but I think about her all the time and I don't know what to do. I want to read her diary and burn every piece of paper that says she isn't human. I want to break everything that ever hurt us. I want to cry about it.

* * *
    
    
    GIRL (17, finished off) sits against a door frame in the snow. VALKYRIE (blonde and blue-eyed) approaches her.
    
        VALKYRIE
        I am assigned rations. I have no need for them.
    
    GIRL is weakly confused. VALKYRIE offers her a small bread. GIRL takes it.
    
        VALKYRIE (cont.)
        Do not tell anyone.
    
    GIRL looks down.
    
        GIRL
        Wait.
    
    VALKYRIE has started walking away, but stops.
    
        GIRL (cont.)
        What is your name?
    
        VALKYRIE
        Ava Delta-509. Record-keeper.
    
        GIRL, unprompted
        Ately Dressler.
    

* * *

"Ava," I whisper. It's the dead of night and so I shake her shoulder.

"Ately," Ava says. I'm close enough to hear the pitch of her motor increasing as she wakes up.

"I'm scared," I say. "Sorry."

We're both quiet for a while.

"You're shivering," Ava says.

"It's like that night, isn't it?" I say, taking a breath. "Or any of them, before we ran."

Ava is quiet.

"I know we've never talked about what happened," I say, and then I swallow. "I'm afraid that I'm letting too much time pass without saying anything, and maybe that's causing me to fall apart. Or lose something fundamental."

"I don't understand."

"I remember when we got on the train, and my legs were so tired, and you held me for warmth. Because I was so cold."

"Do you want me to hold you now?" Ava asks.

I look down. "Yes," I breathe, and there's a hesitant mess of arms and legs until I'm next to her in bed, blushing terribly as Ava's arms work around my back. I'm not sure where to put my eyes.

"Do you remember that I kissed you," I blurt.

"Yes."

"Did you hate it?"

"It was one of the moments with you where I felt the most human," Ava says, then looks down. "I am afraid that it was the wrong way to feel."

"You are human," I say. "And fuck everything else. Fuck the degradation. Fuck the test."

"Even if I am human, I would be a woman," Ava says. At some point I've started holding her hand over my shoulder.

"I can't stop thinking about you," I say. "Every single day, I... I think I'm falling in love with you, and I'm so scared it's wrong."

"You're crying," Ava says.

"Yeah. I am," I breathe.

"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed with me," Ava shrugs. "I don't have flesh, or spit, or lips, or anything that a human woman should have."

In response, I hold her harder, and ask, "Can't I hate my body in the same way? I'm a ruined woman, Ava. Everyone can see it. You, especially."

"I don't understand," Ava says.

"I don't care what we don't have," I say. "I just want you to hold me."

When I finally look at Ava, I see my tears soaked into the side of her hair. I absently reach over to wipe her face with my hand, and she leans in quietly, and kisses me.

"Ately," Ava says. It's not a question or even a statement; it's just something small and beautiful to hang in the space between our mouths before we kiss again, harder; I can barely decide what to do with my hands so I just hold her to me, because some part of me is still afraid that the kiss will end and we'll go back to being afraid.

"How far can I go," I ask. I can barely breathe.

"Anything," Ava says, and so I roll her onto her back and spread my legs across to sit on her stomach; lean down to kiss her again. "Ava," I say, just to hear her name again. I can do it before I have to pant another breath. "I can't believe we're doing this. Is this okay?"

Ava just nods, so I pull my shirt open and press her hand against my breast; I know we can both feel my heartbeat; we can both feel my ribcage and see the scars and the hell and it's just _there_; just a thing that we're sharing that doesn't need to run. I can't breathe and it's wonderful. Ava plays a hand across my side and down my stomach and I catch my breath again; moan because I can't hold it back; I'm already soaked under my skirt and I know she can feel it, too.

"Where should I touch you," I ask.

"I am not designed to feel pleasure by touch," Ava says. "It's mundane to me."

"Where do you feel the most?"

"I suppose my hands are sensitive."

"Okay," I breathe, and I take her hand and kiss it once, tentatively, and then I lick down the length of her pointer finger and suck the tip.

"I can't say if this is doing anything to me. It's... interesting," Ava says. She must have seen my gaze fall, because she reaches her hands up to trace a smile on her face. "However, for yourself..."

"Oh," I breathe. I can feel the blood rushing to my face, like I'm drunk, and I can barely think; I take Ava's hand and guide her under my panties, moaning as we accidentally brush over my clit.

"I think I've wanted this for so long," I say to her. "I thought it was wrong. I was so fucking scared. There were so many nights where I'd think about you doing _this_ to me, and I'd touch myself..."

"I'm flattered," Ava says. "I suppose I've explored the same, but found nothing interesting. I hope this is doing something."

"Ava, I'm already so close. It doesn't _fucking_ matter," I say, and I think she barely hears it; I pull her torso up off the bed to kiss her again and then I fall apart and break and we collapse back down; I can't feel my legs or _anything_; I just breathe moans into Ava's ear; smell myself all over her; everything is wet and I'm holding her, and kissing her, and _holding_ her.

"I love you too," she says, and means it.

* * *
    
    
    GIRL (18, barely alive) is carried by VALKYRIE across a frozen wasteland. VALKYRIE holds a gun, but has clearly never used one.
    
    VALKYRIE stops to adjust GIRL's weight, and then continues.
    
        VALKYRIE
        I've got you. You're safe. You're safe.
    

* * *

In the morning, I tell Ava that I'm sorry.

"Why?" Ava replies.

"I've distracted you from your test."

"It was degrading anyway."

I look down. "I suppose I've fundamentally changed our relationship and it's time to part ways forever."

"That doesn't make sense," Ava says. "Sex is weird, and I'd have it with you again. The rest is the same."

"Just as well," I say. "I suppose I'm more anxious than usual. Now that I'm being honest with you it feels like I've given the whole world another reason to look down on the both of us."

Ava just shrugs, like she wouldn't dignify the world with a reply.

"I'll figure it out," I say.

"Yeah," Ava says. "Me too."

* * *

  1. Hello. My name is Ately Dressler. I live in a broken mind, in a broken body, in a tiny room in a devastated city in a country that tried to kill me; and I'm alive. I'm alive and it hurts. I'm alive and I'm scared. I'm alive. I'm alive. I'm alive.


End file.
